


Crazy Girl and the Big Bad Merc

by DhampirsDrinkEspresso



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Innuendo, May/December Relationship, Pregnancy, Rating May Change, Romance, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:54:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23050531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DhampirsDrinkEspresso/pseuds/DhampirsDrinkEspresso
Summary: A few Rayne one shots from the early 2000's. Each chapter is a separate story or drabble, mostly fluffy one-shots, nothing underage. Rating is precautionary, as I haven't gone through all my older files yet and I am pretty sure there are still some missing.
Relationships: Hoban Washburne/Zoë Washburne, Jayne Cobb/River Tam, Kaylee Frye/Simon Tam, Malcolm Reynolds/Inara Serra
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	1. Assistance

**Author's Note:**

> River needs Jayne’s help with something. (Original Posting/File date December 28, 2008)
> 
> This first one is set in a Post-BDM, distant future, featuring a happily married River and Jayne, because Rayne!fluff is my life...

No sooner had he gotten his foot on the ladder than he was met with a plaintive cry from within his bunk. “Finally, my Jayne! I require the assistance of your finger!”

“Gorram baby, all ya had ta do was say and I’d a give ya more than that. What’d ya do, start without me?” Jayne Cobb hurried down the ladder into his bunk, skipping every other rung, mind filled with all the enticing images of what could be waiting for him. When he dropped to the floor and spun around (hands already on his belt) however, the sight which greeted him was not any of the things he ever could have dreamed up. “Uh, darlin’?”

“A firm touch, just here,” River Tam-Cobb demanded and Jayne could tell she was on the verge of frustrated tears. He approached her slowly, like he would a wounded animal, and stretched out one hand. Immediately, her small fingers wrapped around his wrist, jerking his considerable bulk to the floor beside her. Having learned early on in their relationship that humoring her was by far the safest route, Jayne let River guide his right index finger to the center of the bright green ribbon she had tied around the neatly wrapped package before her. In a matter of seconds, River had tied a large, festive, perfectly even bow on the gift. She beamed up at him. “The equation balances.” Her face fell a bit, nose scrunching up in that cute little way when she didn’t understand the little things. “The logic was faultless, but the laws of physics proved in conflict when method and theory were put into action.”

“Uh, OK, babe, if you say so.”

River sighed and took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she spoke. “I thought I could wrap the gifts with no need of assistance, but the ribbons were problematic. That a single individual could complete the task unassisted is impossible.” She opened her eyes and looked to Jayne, certain he would share in her frustration. Wide brown eyes blinked in confusion at the look on his face. Jayne’s expression was the one normally present when he attempted to hold in his laughter. River scowled, at which her husband seemed unable to control himself any longer and gave in to hearty guffaws.

When Jayne was able to regain control of himself, he tried not to grin too broadly at his wife. She had her arms crossed over her breasts and was glaring heatedly. “I have no understanding of your mirth. The situation lacks humor.” The glare lessened as tears welled up and threatened to overflow. Risking life and limb, Jayne plucked a stray scrap of gift-wrap out of River’s hair before pulling her into his lap.

“Sorry. I weren’t tryin’ ta upset ya none.” His only response was a sniff and he dropped a kiss on top of her head. “’s jus’ nice, knowing there’s somethin’ don’t come so easy to you.”

River shifted in his lap, craning her head back to look up at Jayne quite seriously. “You are the strangest man in the ‘verse, _zhàng fū_.”

“Yeah, well, takes a strange old man to wanna marry a crazy little girl.” River grinned at his playful tone, accepting a kiss.

“Now, ya don’t with all that wrappin’?”

“Yes, the night’s labor is complete. The remaining packages may remain ribbon-less,” she replied, sticking her tongue out at the small stack of gifts for the Yule holidays in the corner of their bunk.

“Good, cuz we got some unwrappin’ ta do.”

“Insensitive ingrate. I am in the midst of emotional turmoil. There will be no unwrapping of this woman tonight.”

“You got a dirty mind, girl. I was talkin’ bout the post. Ma sent us a package.”

River practically launched herself off of Jayne’s lap and pounced on the slightly battered, brown paper wrapped parcel. Inside she found a small blanket, sky blue with pink trim, and three pairs of baby booties, one each in yellow, pink, and blue, as well as a few pair slightly larger and thicker. Clutching them to her chest, River promptly burst into tears yet again.

“Wha’? What’s wrong? Ya don’ like ‘em?” A shake of her head implied no. “They the wrong colors?” Another emphatic shake. “I ain’t sure what ta do. I can’t help if’n ya don’t tell me how.”

“N-nothing!” River wailed, still holding the socks in a death grip. “They’re all p-p-perfect!”

“Then why are ya cryin’?”

“I don’t knowwwwwwwwwwww!”

Laughing at the absurdity of it, Jayne once again dragged his wife into his lap, cuddling her close and fingering the material in her hands. They were soft, prolly the softest he’d touched since Mattie was a baby and Ma’d made ‘em for him. He’d expected the ones for the little ‘un, and the blanket too, really. The ones for River musta been the reason his ma hadn’t sent the package on earlier, seein’ as how the baby was due in the next couple months. He’d be willin’ to bet Vera that his Ma had the blanket and booties all wrapped up and ready to go when she got his last letter ‘bout how River weren’t wearin’ no shoes at all and she didn’t have no socks and he was ‘fraid she was gonna take a chill or get hurt, not that he’d have ever admitted that to anyone but his ma, and maybe River. Trust Ma to come up with a solution when he hadn’t even thought to ask her to. Jayne squeezed his wife.

“Jayne?”

“Hm?”

“Can I wear my new socks to bed?”

“Hell, woman, I ain’t gonna stop ya. Why’d ya even ask? Worried they won’t match your pajamas?”

River peered up at him from under her hair. “I never mentioned pajamas.”

“Hm . . . oh, hell! I think I’m a mite tired right now!” Jayne said, practically dumping River to the floor in his haste to get up. River giggled and allowed him to tug her to her feet, face turned up expectantly for a kiss. Just before their lips met, she gasped and pulled away.

“5 minutes, my Jayne, your progeny is dancing on my bladder.”

Jayne grinned as she hurried off, wonderin’ how in the gorram hell he’d got to be the luckiest _hun dan_ in the ‘verse.


	2. Wrapt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> River is frustrated when no one will accept sound logic over tradition. It's up to Jayne to explain it to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original posting/File date January 2, 2010

She tried with Simon first. Surely out of all of them he would see the truth of her logic. He simply could not disagree. She must have miscalculated, forgotten to include some variable, because when she presented her case, point by logical point, he simply called her a brat, ruffled her hair as if she were still a child, and left in search of Kaylee. She was NOT a brat. She was a genius. On the way out of the infirmary she paused at the counter, knocking over Simon's methodically arranged bandages and cotton swabs. OK, so maybe she was a little bratty, but it was her duty as his younger sister...

Kaylee seemed appalled at the very idea and stared at River with wide eyes as she argued that River simply didn't understand (preposterous!). River wandered off in search of another target before the bubbly mechanic finished speaking.

Perhaps a bit of manipulation was in order. The captain was in the cockpit. River turned and headed that way. She left only moments later, fuming at his insistence that the validity of her argument had no substance. 

“I'm the captain. My boat, my rules.” 

Wash agreed but as no one else could hear him it was of little help.

Zoe simply smiled and placed a hand on her ever-expanding belly. “Ain't always that easy, River. Was a time I'd have agreed with you...” Her eyes took on that far away look she got when she thought of the father of her miracle child. Perhaps a logical argument was not the most appropriate tactic for the first mate.

Inara countered her arguments with cool words laced with reason and patronization. She spoke of ceremony and tradition and smelled of spice and copulation.

She avoided the Shepherd's old room, knowing the words of his Symbol would creep from the walls, condemning her infallible logic as avaricious sin.

River dropped into Jayne's bunk with bare feet and a sour mood. The merc was sitting on the bed, whetstone and an already razor sharp knife in his busily working hands. He never looked up from what he was doing, never acknowledged her presence in any way...but he knew. He had known she was coming almost before she opened his hatch. River watched him in stubborn silence, her slender arms crossed just under her chest.

“Well?” he fairly demanded, finally sheathing the knife and stowing the sharpening took in a box peeking out from beneath his bed.

River didn't answer right away, preferring to hide behind the glossy brown fall of her hair and stare down at her toes.

“Riv?” Unconsciously, Jayne mirrored her posture, crossing his own arms over the expanse of his chest and staring.

With something most accurately described as a growl, the psychic assassin/part time pilot/extra gun hand in a pinch stepped away from the ladder and shook her hair back. “They refuse to see the validity of the logic!” He didn’t catch most of what she said next, if they were even real words. She paced back and forth across the small space of his bunk, gesticulating wildly.

Jayne watched her for a while, more amused than he would have admitted to anyone. He was used to waiting these moods out. Usually only took a few minutes and she'd get the frustration out, figure out a new solution or a new challenge all together. He'd give her two more minutes...

River quieted suddenly, stopped her pacing. The merc stood and took a tentative step forward, not certain if gettin' too close was safe right now. He paused, watching carefully for any sign of what sort of mood River was in―“quiet, thinkin' things through” or “quiet, gonna kill with my brain.” She shifted a bit, arms coming back up and wrapping around herself. OK, so there was a third option. Better move fast. Jayne closed the gap between them and had her in is arms by the time her breath hitched and the sobbing started.

“Ah, baobai, it ain't all that bad.”

River sniffed a few times and burrowed into his chest. The force of her tears shook her whole body. He'd learned quick that at times like this he was best off to hold her close, rub her back, stroke her hair...and wait.

Eventually—finally—River cried herself out and relaxed against Jayne. “Walls came down. Others crept in.” Her words were only slightly muffled with her face buried in his chest. She got quiet again, but Jayne knew that didn’t mean she was finished. Her next words were softer, but calmer too. “I was drowning in the frustration; forgot to block things out.”

“Zoe again?” River nodded. Throughout the course of Zoe’s pregnancy, River had been along for the ride every time the first mate’s hormones surged until she lost control of her emotions. Truthfully, River had cried and raged more than the other woman. Jayne shifted, hands closing around River’s upper arms in a grip which most would have call uncharacteristically gentle. He tugged at her just the lightest bit, prompting the slim woman to step back enough that he could look down and see her face. “You ready to talk at me now?”

River sighed, wrinkling her nose. “There is nothing to discuss. My logic is sound. There is no point in wrapping presents. The idea was to revive the tradition for the sake of Zoe’s progeny—Haven has not even been born yet! I already know the contents of each package, and the tradition was lost to most worlds with Earth That Was. Christmas… Solstice… Yule… the traditions and religions the idea came from are not even practiced on this ship! Why will the others not fold?”

“Why won’t you?”

River glared and actually stamped her foot. “Illogical!”

Jayne looped his arms around the little genius, pulling her back against him before she could work herself to a lather again. “Some things ain’t about logic, Riv. Sometimes ya do things what don’t make no sense, just cuz…”

“Because of what, my Jayne?”

“Aw, Riv, ya ain’t really gonna make me say it?”

“You intend to speak of doing things because of emotion—because of love.”

The mercenary got quiet, uncomfortable with the direction he had unintentionally led the discussion. River felt the tension in his muscles and in his thoughts. “I will not force you to—”

Her words were cut off by the low rumble of his voice, that quiet, soft tone he got when he was talking about his childhood. “Ya know, we celebrated Christmas when I was a kid. Ma was always real big on the Bible—even dragged me to preachin’ when the circuit preacher come through.” 

Jayne relaxed back against the hull, staring off into space. “We didn’t have much when I was a youngin’. Ma took in washin’ and mendin’ and Pa worked extra shifts and set up a still in the woods, just to keep food in tha house, even afore Mattie was born. I was workin’ in the garden and around the house from the time I could walk. But ever’ year, for just one day, Ma bought real sugar and made us a cake or pie or even candy, an’ Pa, he didn’t touch the bottle. An’ ever’ year, on Christmas mornin’ I had a gift to open. I waited, looked forward to it all year…and ever’ year it was a hat or scarf or somethin’ I’d watched Ma workin’ on at night. But it didn’t matter that I knew. It mattered that they took the time. It mattered that they…aw hell, it just mattered.”

River was quiet, leaning against her lover’s chest and listening to the steady thump of his heart. His emotions bled through and she could feel it all—the love, the longing, the joy. “Jayne?”

“Yeah?”

“I understand now.”

“Tha’s good.”

When Christmas morning came, no one’s packages had more bows and ribbons than the ones River handed out and no one had a problem with the young psychic’s decision to let her walls completely down for just one day, and soak in the love that came with unwrapping.


	3. Blade Dancer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> River reflects and remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original posting/file date July 19, 2010

_“He looks better in red.”_

_A quick slice, just enough to break the skin. Never saw it coming. Blood salty, bitter in her mouth._

_It will scar nicely._

Love is like that, she thinks, studying the gleaming blade. Bright and gleaming and deceptively sharp. Dangerous. It slips in before you know, before you can feel, and by the time you react the death blow is dealt. 

_Hurts. It hurts and stings and it burrows deeper. Cut it out. Grind it to dust. That is the way of things._

One finger traces the curve of blade from hilt to tip of the dagger, the pressure and angle just so, and there’s no mark. No cut, no berry-bright blood, no stinging steel-on-flesh kiss as the blade withdraws. It terrifies her, this bright and burning thing, and yet she comes back, time and again, handling the blade with precise movement. She has mastered this one, like so many others. Gleaming blades, singing axes, guns that roar and whisper--even her own limbs and a mind that is, when the training takes over, detached at best from the reality of it. 

_Simon. He came. Rescued the princess in the tower. But the princess is the witch. The hair is false and he’ll fall from the top if he tries to climb. So much screaming without a voice. They know._

Angles and vectors and pressure and force. There is no probability, only the certainty of the killing blow. And that, she reflects, tracing the blade outline again, is the danger of emotion. Emotion enters and the equation is unbalanced, leaning too heavily on rage/hate/anger/longing/fear. Aim shifts. The blow goes wide.

_“She feels everything. She can’t not.”_

It’s a mistake. They cut in, removed the extraneous matter, honed the weapon. No one saw the flaw.

_“Also? I can kill you with my brain.”_

It’s not her brain that’s the danger, Jayne tells her, breath heaving as they lay entwined, sticky with sweat. Body. Mind. Soul. Heart.

The danger lies in _some_ of the parts.


	4. Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> River has studied the crew, broken them down into their parts and assigned the proper labels and descriptions. Except Jayne. She still seeks to understand Jayne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original posting/file date March 7, 2011

Inara is an exotic spice, the kind that burns a path to the center of your being and leaves a pleasant tingle behind. 

Kaylee is the shining brightness of the first true days of spring, when you know the harsh winter has well and truly passed. 

Simon is the cocoon which wants to envelop and protect her, denying her changes even while giving safe refuge where they can happen.

Zoe is the moment when autumn becomes winter, desolate and cold but there is life beneath the frosted surface—she will return to something more come the spring. 

Mal is a bullfrog—puffed up and angry when he and his are threatened, silently watching over them in the quiet hours, croaking at the stars in the neverending black. 

She cannot help but laugh at the mental image of the captain as a fat, slimy bullfrog, croaking his malcontent...she laughs again as the word forms in her mind. Malcontent. Another giggle. She would share with the class if they were in the same grade. As her mind wanders on, progressing in associations, she falls silent once more. 

For the most part, the crew—her family now, ignore River’s outburst. They have become accustomed to the random laughter and little comments muttered under her breath in the months since the Miranda broadwave. She will never be sane, but she is better, and for now that is enough…for the most part. Jayne, however, is not “the most part” and he shoots the girl a look that steals her breath and cuts to the core of her. “Crazy,” his eyes say. “Broken.” In that moment, she decides Jayne is a tornado: spinning, raging, destructive. No one follows when she runs from the room. No one ever notices when River’s feelings are River’s.

The next day, River decides she has miscalculated. Jayne is no whirlwind, no angry sky. As he sights down the barrel of the gun he has just claimed for his own, there is a cold sense of purpose that makes her shiver. The bandit who had thought to use that gun on River and Mal in order to claim their pay as his own shivers as well. Jayne is the icy point of the frozen skewers waiting patiently on the tree in deep winter, ready to launch themselves at their prey. 

Following a safe return to the ship, the new gun is gruffly thrust into her hands. “Stoosmallformahhands.” He lumbers away before she can finish processing the smash of words. No longer is he glittering, deadly ice. Once again, she has miscalculated.

The numbers are off, the data skewed and there is no explanation. There is a hulking, Jayne-shaped anomaly in all her careful processing. The results hold true for the remaining crew. Even the echoed shades of those gone ahead hold true to the formula. She runs the figures, re-collects and re-enters the data, and the conclusions are the same. Even Serenity, beloved to them all, has her niche. River fists her hands in her own hair, mourning what was lost for surely the answer must have been somewhere in the brain matter the doctors had taken. With a start she realizes Jayne is not the only anomaly. The matter bears further observation and research.

The first experiment ends in a haze of smoothers as Simon mends the skin she cut, seeking her answers below the surface. The second step gets Jayne septic duty for a month when he breaks Captain Bullfrog’s “no naked mercenary” rule while chasing a laughing River to reclaim the clothes she removed from the shower rooms. The third trial results in waves of fear from Kaylee and Captain trying to take away Linus. This also results in an unlikely alliance as Jayne storms into the room, taking River’s new gun from Mal and handing it back to the girl—still unloaded of course.

“Ain’t none of you lot listened to the Moonbrain? Goin’ on weeks now she’s been babblin’ on about takin’ things apart and some o’ her ex-per-i-ment go se. If you’da just helped her like she asked the first five times ain’t likely she’d o’ been half as much trouble.” Everyone seems confused when he storms back out muttering about idiot captains and top three percent morons.


End file.
